


Terminalator: A Sarah Connor Chronicle

by executrix



Category: Blake's 7, The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: AU, Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-12
Updated: 2011-05-12
Packaged: 2017-10-19 07:20:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three guerillas and an android walk into a bar...and help Blake attack Central Control.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Terminalator: A Sarah Connor Chronicle

1.  
They might be waiting there for minutes or hours (or, as Vila liked to point out, they might be killed at any minute) so Blake covered the situation by letting Vila order as many rounds of drinks as he liked, but topping them up from Avon’s bottle of mineral water when Vila looked around to check for death threats. In a spaceport dive like this, Blake suspected that the drinks—to the extent they weren’t pure wood alcohol (no, this wasn’t a planet with extensive forestation, wood alcohol would probably be the luxury product) were probably pretty well watered down anyway. Vila thought that since he usually got about a quarter of what he asked for he might as well ask for twelve drinks, and perhaps get three.

Blake was beginning to wish he’d brought Cally along. At least she could slip into a meditative state and avoid attracting attention. Although, in low places, an attractive woman like Cally would attract one sort of attention merely by being there. And, Blake thought, in a place like this, that handsome young man with the beautiful but flagrantly unhappy-looking brunette in the burnt-umber muslin dress would attract more or less the same sort of attention, and quite apart from their own risks, trouble might start any minute.

“Eh, Avon, looks like your eyelash title is at risk,” Vila said. Then they all stood up at once, aware that their contacts had arrived. The youth, the woman, the round-faced girl with the long hair, and the man who might just as well have worn fatigues instead of the cargo shorts and red-and-yellow striped shirt, went to the jukebox.

“Distant Star” began to play. The Liberator crew awarded them style points. Naturally, it hadn’t been on the jukebox, they’d been expecting the conventional tune whistled under someone’s breath. Someone must have slipped in a new chip, or somehow hacked the electronics. Avon, against his will, was impressed.

“Well,” the woman said to Blake. “Evidently, here we are.” Then she shut up, something that Blake thought she had a lot of practice with.

“I suppose we oughtn’t to talk here,” Blake said. “Come on. We’ll take you to our ship.”

Avon started to protest—he had been vocally devoid of enthusiasm about even this meeting--but he knew a fait accompli when he saw one.

“Ship?” the man with the stubble and the eyes that looked like they’d once been sapphire but grayed with time and experience. “We’re in the desert.”

“Now now, we aren’t,” the girl intoned. “Not this now, anyway.” Cameron pointed to a discarded newspaper on a none-too-clean table, which booted it up. The headlines played until an ad came up and recited the date before it started selling things. “John didn’t send us back,” Cameron said. “He sent us forward.”

“Awww, FUCK,” Derek said.

“Pas devant les enfants,” Cameron said.

“Mom, I….” John began, then stopped. It wasn’t like the him who screwed up was really him. Sort of. And anyway, he shouldn’t have to apologize. He was just along for the ride. People told him to run, he ran. People told him to inflict grievous bodily harm, or blow things up, that’s what he did. It was worse than getting a Suzuki violin and having to practice for an hour every day when you were, like, three, and an hour felt eternal…Just because someone thought you were going to be this great musician some day.

2.  
“Seven to teleport,” Blake muttered into his shirt cuff, when they finally got a bit of privacy. The dark alley outside the bar had been occupied by a drug deal. They shifted one alley over. Sarah unclipped the pencil flash from her belt, and told the kid on his knees that she was a P.I., whatever that was, hired by his mother. The kid bolted, followed at a slower pace by his john, slowed down by fly-zipping as well as age.

“Blake, one of the bracelets is defective,” Cally said, over the tannoy.

“Blimey, THAT’s never happened before,” Vila muttered. “We must hear that oftener than a knocking shop after the blokes’ve had their rum rations on payday.”

Avon sighed and reached for the repair kit in a pouch on his belt. Blake held up a hand to stop him.

“Miss…ah….” Blake said.

“Cameron.”

“Just the one name, eh?” Vila asked. “Lot of it about in these parts.”

“Are you an android or a cyborg?”

“Who wants to know?” Cameron said angrily. Sarah wished that they hadn’t done such an exact job of modeling nominal-age-appropriate Whining and Eye-Rolling behaviors.

“Mr. Connor, perhaps you could put your arms around her?” Blake said, in his most persuasive tone.

“I’ll put my arms around her!” Vila said.

“Ah, at last we’ve found an assignment you’d volunteer for,” Avon said.

“Well, you see, an android might, as it were, travel as luggage. Like your clothing when you teleport.”

“You mean your clothes don’t fall off?” John asked. “I like it here already.”

“Yours do?” Vila said. “Maybe we could do a swop.”

“Android,” Cameron muttered.

“Cally, six for teleport now,” Blake said.

3.  
“And you didn’t notice that technology was centuries more advanced?” Gan asked mildly.

Derek, who didn’t know about the Limiter chip, took the mildness as a subtle threat, and narrowed his eyes.

“Aww, Derek, chill!” John said.

“No, I…we…didn’t,” Derek said. “I mean, we ended up in a friggin’ tunnel, with a bunch of guys and girls in fatigues carryin’ big-ass assault weapons. We’re always in another friggin’ tunnel with some kinda scruffy rebels. All looks the same, you know? So they took us to the big cheese…”

“Avalon…” John said.

“And she said we should come here, that she was the regular army type, and you’re the guerillas. Far’s I’m concerned, nothin’ wrong with R.A., but that’s not what Sarah’s about. Or John, yet. And Avalon’s people don’t trust Cameron’s kind, which in my book makes ‘em a lot smarter than FutureJohn, but he didn’t listen to me…”

“An alternate course is available that would conserve fuel,” Orac piped up. Avon went over for a conference, although he suspected that Orac was just interrupting because it hated not being the center of attention.

Derek flinched. “Metal! You got metal flying your ship?”

“More like Lexan, I should say,” Avon said. “But if you prefer, Cally will show you to the engine room and you can flap your arms about and try powering the ship by your own noble human efforts.”

“I’m not some kind of Luddite,” Derek said. “Believe me, given a choice between a well-scoped sniper rifle with a full mag, and a rock, I’m gonna be behind cover and shootin’ em long before they get to me. But I wouldn’t have come here if I thought you sold out to ‘em too.”

“Hey, it’s not like we have a choice about these little jaunts,” John said.

“Yeah,” Cameron said. “We could be doing a tour as the shooting gallery for the ass-end of the American Southwest.”

Sarah patted John’s shoulder. “If They don’t know you’re here, they won’t try to hurt you,” she said. “Even if it doesn’t mean much to you, it means a lot to me.”

Blake cleared his throat. “I’ll just brew up then, shall I?”

4\.   
Cameron was the only one tactless enough to admit that she didn’t want a nice hot cup of tea, although none of her companions did either, and Vila hoped Blake didn’t empty out the caddy, he didn’t know when they’d be able to get some more.

Blake touched his hand to the side of the teapot—still warm, so he poured himself half a mug of tea and added milk and sugar. “I know that your mission experience has made you highly conscious of security,” he said. “So you can understand that we cannot simply allow you unrestricted access to the Liberator and all of her systems. My suggestion is that each of you should be accompanied by a member of our crew. It might seem foolish to double up on accommodations when our ship is so large, but I would feel more comfortable if each of you were to share a cabin with one of us.”

“I don’t sleep,” Cameron said.

“That’s convenient,” Avon said. “I quite often don’t either.”

“’S a mutual admiration society, innit?” Vila said. “Blake gets to meet a great revolutionary leader, like he wants to be. You get to meet a robot. Like you want to be.”

“It’s surprising that he’s a Delta,” Avon said, “Considering that he serves no function…” then felt a bit cheap about making fun of Vila in front of a stranger, even one who was likely to appreciate math jokes.

“Gan, perhaps you would take charge of our young friend…” Blake began, but Jenna interrupted with, “That’s quite all right, Blake, I shall take charge of our young friend” and at least a handful of quotation marks.

“John, I…” Sarah began.

“If I’m going to be a revolutionary leader, I’d better start making some of my own decisions,” John said. “Thank you, Ms. Stannis. That’s very kind of you.”

“Very selfless,” Avon said.

“Well, in that case…” Vila said. “Sarah, live with me if you want to come?” Vila said diffidently. Amazingly, for the first time in—well, he couldn’t remember when—his line seemed to be working. He’d thought it was pretty funny himself, but not funny enough to cause the whoops of laughter that forced Sarah to slide off the flight-deck couch down on the floor, her legs splayed out in front of her.

“And that’s not a ‘No’?”

Sarah, still unable to speak, shook her head. Vila correctly interpreted the double negative as a Yes.

“Would you like to share my cabin?” Cally asked. “Not on a sexual basis, but because I would be interested in discussing our experiences with unconventional warfare.”

“Sure!” Derek said. “A-Number-One, lady, I’m no rapo. And anyway, I bet you could kick my ass if I got out of line. So, where—or what—ya been fighting?”

“The Federation….” Cally began. “Well, I’m tired and I have first watch tomorrow…we might as well go to the Wardrobe Room for some spare bedding and then continue talking in my cabin.”

5.  
“Wow!” John said. “That was amazing! You’re amazing! Thank you! I mean, I don’t want you to think it was the first time, there’s this girl, Riley, and she’d probably kill me if she knew about this…”

“I collect revolutionary leaders, you see,” Jenna said. “When I was a girl, it was cigarette cards…”

“Uh, you mean you and Mr. Blake….?”

“Some cards take longer to find than others.”

John stretched out an arm, and Jenna curled up next to him. She yawned a little, but didn’t want to go to sleep right away, relying on John’s dual nature as quite adult in certain ways, yet adolescent when it counted. No doubt he was also adolescent in ways that could render his company cumulatively unbearable, but Jenna didn’t think he’d be around long enough for that to happen. The Liberator crew had had various short-term encounters with their fellow-rebels, but somehow no one seemed to put down roots.

6.  
Sarah opened her eyes, stretched, and smiled. “I can’t call you a liar,” she said.

Vila nuzzled into the waves of hair at the nape of her neck, and threw an arm around her waist. “You’re a pretty lady,” he said. “I hate to see pretty ladies be sad. Or angry.”

“Just pretty ladies? Not anybody else?” she said, but teasingly.

“I could pretend that I worried about everybody, but then I really would be lying,” he said. “You look a lot more…relaxed now. And even more beautiful.”

Sarah sat bolt upright, dislodging Vila’s arm (and in fact rolling him over). “I can’t afford to relax,” she said. “And our war is still going on.”

“You see, if you’d grown up poor like me, you’d know that there’s always a war going on. Sometimes an official one, but mostly just people with guns taking away your money and your food or just making sure you didn’t have any.”

“Believe me, I’m not exactly Paris Hilton—uhh, I mean, I sure didn’t grow up rich. But that’s my point. The war never stops.”

“Well, my point is, you can’t end it, so why not fight back in your own way—by trying to have a bit of fun when you can? A bevvie, a laugh, a tumble if you can find someone who’ll have you?”

“You remind me a little of someone I used to know,” Sarah said. Not that she loved Vila, and not just because they were both a bit elevated as to hairline, and not because Charlie was any kind of a crook no matter how many felonies he inadvertently compounded, but because she saw a spark of kindness in Vila. Charlie….had just had a fireplace for the spark to grow in. Vila had a series of firehoses.

“Was he a ter—a freedom fighter too?” Vila asked.

“In his own way, I suppose. He saved Derek’s life, God bless him. But no, he was an ambulance driver.”

“Too much like hard work,” Vila said. “Though there’s something to be said if, at the end of the day, the blood on you is some other bugger’s. And you save them if you can, but if you can’t, the family goes off and blames the doctor and not you.”

7.  
“Hands, eyes, dimensions, senses,” Cameron said. “If you prick us, we do bleed.”

“D’you know, I can’t quite see why that was done,” Avon said. “It strikes me as a design flaw. Or, rather, a poor choice. I mean, if you seriously attempted to deceive someone into believing that you’re human, the ability to bleed wouldn’t fool anyone who could see the metallic parts of your body or feel the difference between the temperature of your outer covering and skin temperature. . I suppose you might escape a motion detector, yes, that could be useful for a bank robbery…”

“And you’d be wrong,” Cameron said darkly.

Avon shook his head. “Not that we can simply ask why it was done…I don’t suppose you know who created the designs? There might be records somewhere.”

“Don’t look at me. I’m like Frankenstein’s Monster,” Cameron said. “In the book, of course. The book is better. I didn’t ask to be created.”

“No one does, you know,” Avon said. “At least not in the time-going-forwards Universe I’m accustomed to. And the book is predictably better because it’s written by one person, whereas the unfortunate author is very much at the bottom of the pyramid when it comes to visual entertainments. They have to trust other people.”

“I’m at the bottom of the pile,” Cameron said. “People get to order me around because they think they outrank me. I’m not a useful enough thing unless I’m half of sort of a person

“I once told John that he loved me. That was true. And that I loved him. That was tactical. Sometimes I wanted him to decommission my chip. Sometimes I didn’t.”

“Oh, well, I’m sure every thoughtful person often thinks of suicide. To look around yourself is to require a monument.”

“But how could I even derive that tactic? I think…that I should be able to feel. Feeling that you don’t feel is a paradox…It’s like being built with a phantom limb.”

“You should count yourself lucky,” Avon said. “It’s a mug’s game.”

8.  
“You don’t have to do this,” Gan said. “We’re sharing this mission, of course, but you’re not regular crew.”

“It’s all right,” Sarah said, loading bedsheets into what looked more like a trash compactor than any washing machine she’d ever seen. “I might as well be doing something. Derek is teaching Vila how to shoot craps. Cameron is sacked out on your bridge looking dead, but Orac says she’s being of great assistance with his researches.”

Gan was going to ask about John, but he suspected he already knew more about that subject than he should. “Of course you worry about him,” he said, then, even more quietly, “We can’t help caring about our families, can we? But, you know, it couldn’t be hard to recruit for a cause that appeals so nakedly to self-interest as preventing computers from destroying humanity.”

“In the future, John will have an army,” Sarah said. “But now, we’re fighting alone.”

“Perhaps that’s by your choice,” Gan said.

“We have no choice,” Sarah said.

“I’m not so sure about that. Blake is a great man, and, come what may, I’m glad that I had a chance to fight by his side,” Gan said. “But no one is indispensable. Bran Foster, the leader of the Freedom Party, was a great man too. He died, he’s mourned and missed, but even the Federation knew that killing him wasn’t enough to exterminate the whole idea of freedom. If something happens to any of you, surely it won’t be enough to exterminate the whole idea of humanity.”

9.  
“It would be disingenuous to say that I’m just a plain fellow and don’t understand these things, but…how does it work? We think we’re quite the lads with our teleport, something the Federation never achieved, but even so, we can only transport matter in motion, not in time.”

“I don’t know,” Sarah said. “Somehow, in the future—in one potential future in our terms, anyway—there’s a method of transferring people in time. Sometimes there are…caches…of materiel for us, the way Arctic explorers would heave supplies for the homeward trek. I wish I had better answers.”

“Sorry, I don’t mean to interrogate you,” Blake said. “It’s just that I think it’s interesting. And, of course, if we had a weapon like that that was totally incommensurate with anything the Federation can field…”

“I can’t tell you what a relief it is, to be able to talk about it to someone who won’t think I’m crazy. I’m officially insane by government fiat, you know,” Sarah said. “With the papers to prove it. I was in a mental hospital.”

“Me an’ all,” Blake said, with a laugh so rich and warm that Sarah tried to memorize it, in case she ever needed to recruit and inspire a broader range of combatants. “Some days, I look back on it as halcyon days.”

Sarah’s eyebrows rose, and she shook her head.

“Peaceful, I mean. But of course, the fact that a government sees the need to…extinguish…the minds of such of its opponents as it hasn’t exterminated, is the reason we need to fight. I never know if I’ve found the balance, you see. When your life is likely to be forfeit at any moment, it makes moral issues seem both more and less relevant. It could…no doubt it will…all simply disappear. But when you fight absolute evil, how can you do it without forfeiting your humanity?”

“You just don’t know how lucky you are,” Sarah said. “I mean, no one is attacking you **because** of your humanity. You can’t forfeit it, or have it taken away from you. If you do the wrong thing, you could become a bad person, but nothing you could do—or fail to do—would mean that you would ever be the **last** person. Anywhere. Ever.”

10.  
“Hey, Sarah, take a look at this,” Derek said. The daily briefing was playing on Zen’s main screen; Derek thought it was space!CNN, and he didn’t have anything else to do, so he had been watching it for an hour. “The girl in the white dress? She’s the Supreme Commander of Space Command, and that’s a whole thing, it’s not just like being in charge of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it’s more like being in charge of the United Nations. So, hey, around here, Women’s Lib won.”

Sarah watched for a few minutes, silent. Then she said, “And I’m supposed to feel bad? Every time there’s a woman who isn’t either the perfect homemaker or Mother Teresa, then it’s some kind of black mark against me?”

“Calm down! It was a joke!”

Jenna looked up from her seat at the flight deck, where she was running a calibration. “That’s a feeble defense, Mr. Reese. Men often say that when they’ve said something offensive and been called out on it.”

“What’s she like?” Sarah asked Jenna.

“Servalan? She’s the enemy. There may be capital letters on that. I’m sure half of her own staff is convinced she’s some sort of demon. The Federation’s a pretty poor excuse for a political system, and she got to the top of it by means that would have sent her straight to the bottom of anyplace decent—bribery, blackmail, assassination.”

“Does she have any children?” Sarah asked.

“If she did, she probably ate them,” Jenna said.

“No, I mean…well, if she did, and she wanted to create a throne for them to inherit, or if she thought of the whole Federation as her family, then that might…not excuse. But, maybe, explain.”

“You know what they say, to get half as far as a man, a woman has to be twice as good,” Jenna said. “Sometimes when I can’t sleep nights anyway, I treat myself to a good old shudder thinking about what Servalan must have done to get where she is. I’m sure she’s scared off—or killed off—all the witnesses. I’m sure some of it was sleeping her way to the top, but, well, she’s not that pretty and not all men who are big enough damn fools to be got at that way are young enough to do anything about it.”

“Cally and I went over some of Servalan’s military campaigns,” Derek said dreamily. “Cally says that Servalan has some real strategic talent, especially over poorly terraformed…I guess you couldn’t call it terrain…”

“Your gal-pal isn’t human, you know,” Sarah said, annoyed by the reverential tone with which he had already imparted far more of Cally’s insights than Sarah cared to hear. “She’s an Auron.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a planet.”

“Why the bug up your butt? What do you care?” Derek asked. “Anyway, far’s I’m concerned, if she was born and not bolted together in some factory somewhere, that’s human enough for me.”

Jenna and Sarah looked at each other over Derek’s head. There were a few factual pointers Jenna could have delivered, but she didn’t feel that she owed Derek anything.

11.  
“Zen, lay in a course back to Earth, to these coordinates…” Blake said, as soon as he completed the plans for the mission.

“Earth!” Sarah said.

“Yes, that’s where Central Control is,” Blake said.

“Third prize, THREE weeks in Philadelphia,” Derek muttered. “All this hoo-hah in a spaceship, and it’s to go to Earth?”

“Well, it saves us having to get back there…” John began.

“Yeah, but frigged if I know how we’re going to get back to the right time,” Derek said.

“Before you ask, Vila, I quite agree,” Blake said. “We’ve four new allies, all of them experienced fighters, but not at all familiar with our technologies.” (Blake’s own crew had been dismissive of his plans to attack Central Control, so it was a gift to have new, and more enthusiastic, troops.)

Vila looked gobsmacked to be agreed with.

“So Derek and Sarah will be accompanying Gan and myself on this mission. I’m relying on you to operate the teleport, and Cally will relieve you after the end of your shift. Cally, of course you’ll have the infirmary ready, there may be injuries. Jenna, I don’t anticipate any unusual piloting challenges, but as always I can rely on you if there are…”

Blake conducted a teleport bracelet drill on the flight deck, then sent the mission team off to get kitted up.

12.  
“It’s a computer program THAT WANTS TO WIPE OUT HUMANITY,” John said. What part of “Armageddon” didn’t this guy understand?

Avon nodded. “Now say that again, stressing the other part of the sentence.”

“IT’S A COMPUTER PROGRAM…” John began, then a grin replaced his scowl. “Oh!” he said. “Pretty good for an old guy.” Then he scowled again. “Look, I’ve been trying to hack it, when I’m not running around getting my ass shot at. Don’t think I never tried.”

“Ah. But you didn’t have Orac. And you didn’t have me. Let’s get to work,” Avon said. “The others are…well, away out of our hair.”

“Yeah, how’d you get my Mom to go off on this Central Control thing and leave me?” John asked, remembering the blaze in her eyes and the fierce hug before she teleported out.

“I told her that Orac predicted to a certainty that if you went on the mission, you would die. Everyone else would survive, with or without you.”

“And she bought it?”

“John, I’m surprised you haven’t already learned that while technical skills are important in hacking, so is social engineering. Anyway, it might have been true. Orac quite fancies its predictive powers. A heavy admixture of truth is as important to a successful lie as a heavy admixture of salt is to a successful bag of chips.”

13.  
“For obvious reasons, I’ll go first,” Cameron said. She stepped into the Forbidden Zone, and the electrified mesh knocked her flat.

“Cameron? Are you all right?” Blake asked, running toward her.

“Don’t touch her, Blake,” Derek said.

“I’m not a complete idiot, you know,” Blake said, feeling that the newcomers had quite assimilated into the crew.

By then, the two minutes had elapsed, and Cameron rebooted and sat up. She reached into her knapsack for rubber gauntlets and electrician’s pliers. Then she snipped at the edge of the sensor net, ripped it apart for ten yards or so, stepped forward, and repeated the gesture. When she got to the end, she stowed the gear and then stiff-armed the door of the bunker. It opened. She turned around, hands on hips. “Today?” she asked.

“Good heavens. What happens when two of them oppose one another?” Blake asked.

“Lotta property damage,” Derek said. “Mostly uninsured.”

Derek picked up a pebble and tossed it where the sensor net had been. Nothing happened. He gestured to Blake that he had the honor of leading the way or, depending on how you looked at it, had to walk point. Blake speed-walked, planting his feet deliberately. Sarah was going to sprint past him, then decided to wait until he had crossed the field in case she bumped him into a still-live wire. Once she saw Blake was safe, she ran the distance, probably a little faster than Derek did right behind her. Gan brought up the rear.

Blake took out his pocket viewer and quickly, soundlessly, reviewed the plan of the facility.

14.  
“There,” Avon said. “We did it.”

“How can you tell?” John asked.

“I seldom make mistakes,” Avon said. “And Orac makes even fewer. In the strictly technical mode, at any rate.”

“I don’t know if this is really technical,” John said. “More…I don’t know…metaphysical.”

“It worked,” Orac said. “I don’t know why you even persecute me with your trivial requests if you are not going to rely on answers that you yourself have solicited and that lie well within my expertise.”

John sat down heavily on the flight deck couch. “Holy shit!” he said. “Man, I can’t wait to see their faces when they get back and we tell them.”

Orac was neither surprised nor displeased by John’s failure to follow up with equally annoying and obvious questions.

15.  
There was a degree of resistance at the Central Control site, but nothing that turned into a full-scale firefight. They reached the heart of the complex. Blake threw open the doors, and strode inside, with an odd, flat-footed, turned-out gait.

“I did it!” Blake exulted. “We did it!” With Central Control disabled, the Federation’s defenses would be shattered, and Blake was certain that, beginning with the farthest-flung planets where the Federation’s domination was weakest, but moving inexorably inward, rebellions would begin. He expected many of the Federation’s own soldiers to throw in their lot with the people and against the tyrannical masters who would be quite unable to discover what they had done, far less punish them for it. He opened his eyes, and began looking around to determine where to place the explosive charges.

Cameron started to laugh, then broke it off when she translated Sarah’s and Derek’s viciously hostile glares.

“Blake, ain’t nothin’ here, man,” Derek said. “The room is empty!”

After a horrible second that lasted forever, Blake had to nod in mute agreement. First his legs had refused to work, now his throat did.

Sarah knelt down next to Blake, and put her arm around his shoulder. “They must have moved it,” she said.

“They can’t have done,” Blake said, dazed. {{The only mercy is that Avon isn’t here, he’d never let me hear the end of it.}}

“I’m sorry, Blake!” Gan said. “Well, I suppose we’d best get back to the ship. It must be too deep to teleport from here, we ought to get closer to the surface first. We’ve had filthy luck so far, perhaps if we move fast we won’t encounter any more guards on the way up.”

“Bad intel,” Derek said, thinking, {{Or we killed all the guards, oh boo-hoo, they wouldn’t waste too much manpower guarding an empty room, even if they could use it to rat-trap resisters}}. “Happened to us all the time. Olag’s right, though. We can get the straight dope, try again later. Live to fight another day.”

“Give us a minute,” Sarah said. Derek nodded, and headed out. Gan thought about going to Blake to console him, but he thought that it might be better received from an outsider.

Cameron couldn’t figure out what to do, so she obeyed when Gan gestured to her to come along with him.

16.  
Five minutes later, Derek realized that they must have split up at one of the innumerable twists in the all-too-similar looking corridors. Proud as a kid with a new toy, Derek raised his wrist to his mouth, pressed the button, and yelled “Teleport! Now!”

Nothing happened.

He shook his head. Fuckin’ cell phones. Didn’t matter which century you were in, you still couldn’t get bars when your ass was on the line for it. He resumed trudging in what, as far as he could tell, was upward and outward.

He could feel vibrations beneath his feet, and hear a rumble. He wondered if that was the generator or the reactor kicking in, or if, just his luck, he dropped by in time for the earthquake.

17.  
Sarah was pretty sure she had at least half a clip left after her exertions on the way in, but just to be sure, she ejected the clip, confirmed that she had plenty of bullets for close-up work, rammed it home, and juggled a spare clip from the bellows pocket of her jacket to her free hand. She swung the para-rifle around, aiming right at the crystal lizard clasping Servalan’s gown. Sarah was half-way to pulling the trigger when the rumble and noise of the strontium grenade, and light leaking in from its far-away flash, made her flinch.

That moment of hesitation gave Servalan enough time to do what she did best—bottle out—and, although she was not devoid of weapons, she put a higher priority on saving herself than on wiping out Sarah.

Seconds later, Sarah collected herself, grinned, and took off down the corridor in the opposite direction. She was pretty sure that Servalan was running toward the epicenter of the explosion, and, anyway, the way out was the other way.

18.  
Gan, concluding that Cameron probably had the best navigational skills, followed her along yet another corridor and up another ladder, when the walls split apart like eggshells under a sledgehammer and the ceiling beams cracked and the cave-in began.

“Go!” Gan said. “I’m not worth dying for!”

“Yeah, but I can’t die,” Cameron said. ({{But I think I’m going to disappear soon}} she said to herself.) She leapt on top of Gan, breaking a couple of his ribs as she stood on him to move the slabs of concrete and puncturing his lung as she hauled him out. She tied his wrists together so she wouldn’t drop him, slung him into a fireman’s carry, and dragged him to ground level. Then she reversed her course and went back down to look for her comrades.

In one of the corridors, she saw a man who hadn’t come in with them and didn’t have a teleport bracelet, so presumably he was one of The Other Guys. She swiveled her camera turret toward him and accessed the database.

TRAVIS, said the lettering on her retinal screenviewer.  
FEDERATION BLACK OPS SPECIALIST.  
WAR CRIMINAL.  
ACTION: TERMINATE.

She rushed at him faster than his eye could process, and felt disappointed when she realized she had come up on his blind side and could just as well have strolled. She backed off a little. It was always fun to watch people use up their ammunition shooting at her, then stare as if they were mentally composing a complaint letter about the crappy quality of bullets you get these days, and so expensive too…

She came back toward him, got a hand under his chin, and pinned him to the wall that trembled as more and more of the walls came tumbling down. She looked at him, and saw the weaponized arm. He looked at her, one eye and one mechanized fried egg.

“What **are** you?” he said. “Are you even real?”

“Realer than you,” she said. “I’m all one thing, not most of a man still mourning his improvements.”

Cameron let him go. They were enough and too much alike for her to follow orders, and anyway his Hell chip was implanted and refreshed constantly, he didn’t even get a two-minute vacation.

“You go!” she said. “Live! I…belong….”

And that was her last word.

19.  
“Dear God,” Blake said, seeing Gan’s unconscious form. He was laid out as comfortably as Cameron could manage on a bed of sparse plant life on the chilly ground, not much warmed by the sparse sun. But dead men’s scalp wounds didn’t bleed, so the growing pool of blood was actually a hopeful sign. Blake applied a field dressing from his belt pouch. He checked Gan’s bracelet, and was glad to see it was intact. “Vila? Are you there?” he said.

“Everything’s fine here,” Vila said. “Avon’s glowering about summat in that way he’s got of chortling. He said to bring Orac over for the debrief. He’s sitting on the teleport console. Are you all right?”

“Tell Cally to prep the medical sensor, Gan’s a bit off color,” Blake said. “Teleport him now, and have a stretcher at the teleport bay.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Vila said. “But, Central Control’s all blown up nice and cozy?”

“Bring Gan across,” Blake said with some asperity. “Here come Sarah and Derek now. Three to teleport.”

20.  
“Hey, how’s the big guy?” Derek asked, when he reached the teleport bay. “He looked pretty bad.”

“Avon and Cally are wheeling him to the medbay,” Vila said. “Don’t worry, we’ve got all sorts of equipment, and Cally’s a whiz.”

“Are you okay, Mom?” Sarah nodded, and hugged John. “I’m fine. So’s Derek, and Blake.” She shook her head. “You know all those dormitory bull sessions about whether if you had a time machine you’d go back and kill Hitler?” She realized that was a rhetorical question, since the John she knew hadn’t been to college yet. Academia did not figure heavily in Derek’s CV and she didn’t know if Blake had even heard of Hitler. “Well, I almost killed Servalan.”

“You mean you shot her or knifed her or something but she didn’t die at once?” Jenna asked.

“No, I was going to shoot her, but she ran away.”

Jenna shook her head. “Wouldn’t be the first time. If you get another chance, don’t hesitate.”

“Where’s Cameron?” John said.

“She isn’t anywhere,” Orac said. “Because she isn’t. We have manipulated the timeline so that there is not—there has never been—a Skynet program. Cyberdyne and Zeira Corp. go bankrupt in the Great Dot Com Crash of 2001, scattering their employees and intellectual property. Although artificial intelligence and robotics research continue, with both commercial and military applications, the various Terminator lines

{{Oh, Cameron}} John said to himself, then looked up. “I’m going to miss her. I wish I’d had a chance to say goodbye.”

Derek clapped a comforting hand to his shoulder, hard enough for the sound to ring out. “Yeah, kid, but c’est la guerre, most of the time you don’t get one. One minute your buddy is there, the next minute he’s gone. And, believe me, ‘disappeared’ is a lot better than what usually happens to your friends.”

Jenna was going to asked about Central Control but, seeing the disappointment on Blake’s face, didn’t have the heart. Gan was injured but she thought he would pull through.They still had the Liberator, Zen, Orac, and a Universe of targets.

21.  
(1997)  
Dr. Murch’s bald pate glowed red with indignation. “There are years of person-hours invested in this research! And we can’t just port it if we leave—we have nondisclosure agreements! If you shut down now, it’ll all be wasted!”

Catherine Weaver shrugged. “This is a business, Sunny Jim, not LiveAid. I can’t keep throwing good money after bad. If your Artificial Intelligence division was any more buggered, it’d be the Aquitar Project.” (Catherine shook her head, wondering what that was and why it had come into her head just then.) “Have a pint or ten, take some of your vacation time, and then when you come back I’ll have found a new assignment for you.”

“I don’t want vacation time! I want my research, my skills, and three years of my life not to be wasted.”

“All right then, you’re sacked. I’m calling Security now. Twenty minutes from now, they’ll escort your arse out the revolving door at the front, after watching you to see you don’t take any proprietary data with you.”

After a moment of stunned silence, Murch mustered some energy and hurried toward his desk, wiping his thick-framed glasses on his shirttail. There were some personal items he’d be sorry to lose, including a mint-in-box bikini!Princess Leia.

22.  
(1997)  
Savannah sighed, and began to sketch her usual wave—the protocol that they had agreed on so she wouldn’t be yelled at for being a bad, neglectful daughter, but so her Other Mother wouldn’t have to spend any actual time with her. Then her mouth stretched into a huge grin while her eyes showered.

“Mommy! Mommy! You’re back! It’s really you!”

“Well, of course it’s me, who would it be, then? And I’m enjoyin’ the hero’s welcome back from the office, but you know, I go there most every day, it’s no surprise.” Catherine looked around the room. “What’re the Christmas decorations doin’ up, when it’s July? The Yanks rush the season, but this is ridiculous.”

“Mommy, it’s December,” Savannah said.

Catherine looked out the window, and gained no enlightenment at all from the California weather. She switched on the TV set, and the crawl at the bottom said “December 9, 1997.” She shook her head. “What’s happenin’?”

“Let’s call Doctor Sherman!” Savannah said. “He talks to lots of people who can’t remember stuff!” Then she cried a little, because Dr. Sherman said that when people couldn’t remember it could be because bad stuff hurt them. And she cried a little more because Dr. Sherman was dead, just like her daddy was dead.

EPILOGUE  
(1997)  
“It’s really over,” John said, rolling the words around his mouth. (Or, as Derek said, “Hey, kid, guess you’re not a Hero of the Revolution anymore, you’re back to bein’ a snot-nosed brat.” And John said, “Love you too, Unka Derek.”)

John was driving their sweet, sweet ride, and the house they’d rented was pretty deluxe. It was 1997 again, which was OK with him.

He was sure his mom would get a job soon, or take over Microsoft or something—she wasn’t going to turn into Martha Stewart after all the shit that had gone down—but right then she was at the bank having her shoes polished by a private banker’s tongue.

Before they left the Liberator, Blake had given Sarah a couple of fat handfuls of diamonds from the Treasure Room. Avon had intended to give John a credit disk with some of his Big Wheel winnings, but realized that he’d be unlikely to be able to spend it, so instead he downloaded a history of several of Earth’s stock markets. Vila, swearing John to strictest confidence, gave him a wodge of Big Wheel money. John thanked him, appreciating it in the spirit it was meant, and eventually papered the downstairs powder room with it.

Sarah gave Derek a handful-of-diamonds handshake. His first stop back on terra firma was Las Vegas, where he spent most of his money on gambling and booze and loose women and the rest foolishly.

John registered for classes. He thought about signing up for track, but Junior ROTC? No. Fucking. Way. He kind of missed Cameron, and he was grateful for the innumerable times she saved his ass, but she had definitely needed a lot more looking after than the average kid sister. And, Riley or no Riley, John knew that sooner or later, he was going to stop caring about whether Cameron counted as his sister for incest taboo purposes.

During lunchtime, he helped a tall fat guy put up a banner in the corridor. The two little guys with him wouldn’t have been able to reach.

Warren Meers wondered if that new kid would be interested in joining the Sunnydale High Robotics Club. Warren decided that he probably wouldn’t be. He didn’t look too stupidly slack-jawed to make a contribution, but he did look like more the emo type who slunk around brushing girls off his black clothes.

Warren’s Mom had dragged him to the Rose Bowl swap meet the previous weekend, which he groused about until he found that Mint In Box bikini!Princess Leia. And that wasn’t his only score, either. Buying old computers was always a crapshoot, but there was this other guy two aisles down who knocked a few bucks off the price because it was a naked hard drive, which Warren thought was funny because he wouldn’t want to have to haul a case around. It seemed to have a pretty interesting chess program loaded.


End file.
